After the setback on the last day of January, the Central Bank resumed its buying position from the beginning of the month and accumulated net purchases of $429 million in the first four rounds. Despite the increased demand for imports on the foreign exchange market, the Central Bank manages to maintain its positive balance, albeit at a slower pace than in the first months of the year.
The organization ended this Tuesday with net signings of $167 million. However, International reserves fell again: according to the Central Bank, reserves closed at $26,392 million, or about $508 million less than the balance recorded on Monday.. Market sources indicated that there had been interest payments on the debt to the IMF.
After the normalization of access to the wholesale market, the margins that the Central Bank will have to obtain foreign exchange they will be more limited. In the PPI they indicated that private demand in the MULC does not only refer to companies in the import sector, but also to provinces that have to meet dollar commitments:” Part of the sharp increase in private demand on Tuesday could be explained by the province of Entre Ríos, which will have to pay principal and interest of about $65 million on Thursday. We emphasize that both provinces and companies can access the MULC for up to three days before the date of payment of principal or interest”.
“For now the pace of acquisitions remains very high, but in the coming weeks the pace of payments for imports will normalize and the volume of purchases may decrease. It will be essential to understand what the timing will be between the payment increase imports and the beginning of the liquidation of thick crop. For now it is clearly in the green,” they indicated in the fund manager MegaQM.
Santiago Bausili’s management has allowed a recovery of net reserves, which were negative by 11.5 billion dollars when Javier Milei arrived at the Casa Rosada, to the -5 billion dollars estimated today by the market. The organization has set a net reserve accumulation target of $10,000 with the IMF for this year.
“It does not seem like an easy task, even when the drought will no longer play against us, and will force us to maintain an ever-competitive exchange rate to limit payments for imports (the recession itself will also be an important factor in reducing exports of products )”, they indicated in LCG.
“Maintaining the exchange rate at a competitive level will be key (in addition to the actual evolution of fiscal promises) to unify the foreign exchange market over the course of the year, also mentioned in the information report as part of the roadmap,” they added . So far this year, the wholesaler’s devaluation has barely reached 2.6%
Source: Clarin
